Download Renaissance Era Study Guide

Renaissance Era Study Guide
 Status symbol: Education
o Includes Music as a required
subject
 Renaissance: “re-birth”
 Martin Luther – attached the 95
Theses to a catholic church door,
detailed grievances against the
church
 Technology:
o Printing Press – birth of the
commercial music industry
o Invention and advancement of
instruments
 Harpsichord – plucked strings
 Sacbut – early trombone
o Girls and boys received music
education
 Women were expected to play
to entertain family and guests
o Secular:
 Madrigals (England and Italy)
 Chansons (France)
 England: Pastoral life,
lighter/happier/funny
 John Farmer: wrote
madrigals in the Italian
style, imported them in a
book “Musica Transalpina”
 Italy: Court life, chivalry, love,
loss, emotion – heavier
 Jaques Arcadelt – Belgian,
lived and worked in Italy,
sometimes in France
 Word painting – when the music
reflects the meaning of the text
 Secular Instrumental Music: Dance
music
1) Sacred Renaissance Music
a) Lutheran – language of the
people, everyone sings
b) Catholic – Latin, only sung by male
church hoomans
c) Motet – sacred, Latin, based on
popular style
d) Polyphonic – “many sounds”
multiple simultaneous lines
e) Council of Trent – need to simplify
music to clarify text
i) Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s
music solved the problem and
maintained polyphonic music
(1) Pope Marcellus Mass
ii) Thomas Tallis – Personal
composer of King Henry VIII (Tudor)
of England
iii) William Byrd – Personal composer
of Queen Elizabeth I (Tudor)
f) Cantus firmus: “fixed melody” which
is the foundation of a sacred work
g) A cappella – music for only voices
h) Imitation – voices imitate one
another in different registers and at
different times